


loyal to the cause

by keouil



Series: we can be divine [5]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Uchiha Obito-centric, Uzumaki Naruto-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2020-10-10
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:00:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26932525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keouil/pseuds/keouil
Summary: naruto isn't obito, but lives in the world he died for.
Relationships: Hatake Kakashi/Uchiha Obito, Uchiha Sasuke/Uzumaki Naruto
Series: we can be divine [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1931971
Comments: 4
Kudos: 53
Collections: THE naruto fic list





	loyal to the cause

**Author's Note:**

> obito, before / naruto, after.

obito sees his first dead body at five.

it was purely accidental, it happened when he was accompanying his grandmother on a late night grocery run when he suddenly heard screams coming from everywhere. he held on to her wrinkled fingers tighter just as she began scooping him up in her feeble arms. abandoning the woven basket they were only just filling with fruits not a minute ago, they make a dash for the exit only to find a mass gathering of bodies blocking it.

he didn’t know what it was for, but when more and more people kept closing in and granny’s hold was slowly weakening, he decided he didn’t want to. only when they both got close enough by somehow making it past through the ocean of humans that he sees it.

the first thing that registers on his mind was not the pool of blood surrounding the body, but the strange expression on the man’s face – no, his eyes. 

because obito was an uchiha.

that meant that long before he was allowed to play in the sandbox he was taught the importance of his eye and how he should be careful with it at all times. safe to say since then he has always worn goggles. for all he has been taught since, he couldn’t understand exactly what it was that stuck out so much on the grey set this man had.

but it’s not until the morning news after when they find out it was a robbery gone wrong and a civilian being in the wrong place at the wrong time, that he understands. 

it was the utter normalcy of the man who was simply unlucky but held the multitude of nothingness in his eyes as he breathed his last breath.

* * *

naruto sees life first being born at seven.

for all intents and purposes, he wanted to be in the hospital at that exact time. he _chose_ to accompany the pregnant lady from upstairs who was the only one nice to him. 

it happened when upon her usual greeting, she stumbled for a bit, before collapsing entirely. he then saw a stream of water leaking underneath her and all but dragged the woman to the nearest place with _anything_ , because he was panicking and his arms were starting to sore. 

naturally, the more level-headed adults took over but still he refused to leave her alone because what counted as extra servings of food for her meant the world to him who had not even one.

he stays because no one told him to leave but he suspects no one _wanted_ to talk to him _period_. but that was going to be the least of his problems because the nice, pregnant, food-giving lady was obviously sick with something and he wasn’t going anywhere until he was sure she wasn’t anymore.

only when the emergency doors open and someone ushers him to a secluded room and he sees her again, that he feels relief breathe out into his lungs.

she beckons him to come closer, and that’s when he catches a glimpse of something – a small bundle that _surely_ could not be counted as human, because it was too tiny, tinier than him even. engulfed in hospital linen comfier than his worn-out sheets, he studies the rare specimen and begins coming up with potential theories as to what it could be.

then the lady tells her this is her newborn son, _menma_ , in honour of him; and he decides he doesn’t mind at all.

* * *

naruto isn’t obito, but when they love and lose the ones six feet under they are one in the same.

* * *

obito has seen too many deaths and taken too many lives.

the first time he takes a man’s life, it is a combined effort with someone he knew was too young to know how to wield a katana or make a lightning jutsu. 

maybe it was his hesitation, his will to believe a single life demanded even that – that someone in this world, even a stranger, could grant them the mercy of doubting whether they _needed_ to be killed – that his teammate went ahead and did just that. 

barring no guilt or pause or _anything_ to indicate he understood the magnitude of what they had just done, kakashi walks off to wipe the blood from his kunai.

it’s not the lack of processing or even his own terrified expression that deeply troubled him afterwards, because if anything it made him look at the fragility of life as exactly that. it was no more than a fleeting thing anyone who just needed to be in the right time at the right place could do.

because living through a war meant he needed to re-align his belief about mortality, but obito still held some semblance of optimism for the world that could be something greater. he still hesitates and kakashi still saves and for all the yellow flash has taught them at that point, this is one thing he left out.

that a life is not simply a life. 

that it could be someone’s mother, someone’s son, someone’s best friend, someone’s teacher - **_someone._ **even when the rest of the world screams at him to let it go, he finds himself holding on tighter. because obito was not a lot of things and paled in comparison to the rest of his prestigious clan, but he could be someone who thought about the needle on death row prisoners or straitjackets on suicide watch patients.

he refused to be less sensitive because he believed in a gentler world.

then kannabi – and everything else after.

* * *

naruto has seen too many deaths but taken none.

he almost doesn’t see the man who all but tumbles down like a leaf after that bruising chidori, partly because kakashi-sensei kept trying to cover the body from their eyes, but mostly because he wasn’t sure he wanted to see. 

as of date, either their assigned teacher was exceptionally good at killing bad guys and never letting them see the bodies or they were blissfully ignorant. either way he knew it was time to face the music.

maybe because they noticed the lag in kakashi-sensei’s movement that lacked his usual sharpness, all of them stepped forward despite his persisting. 

what started out as a mundane c-rank infiltration mission, one they’ve done countless times before, quickly turned sour when the mission brief conveniently left out the participation of a formerly a-rank bingo book nukenin. kakashi had to act fast, lest they catch on and see the blood and hate him for making them see the blood. this one was good, but their sensei was better.

so they quickly band together and hold his limbs and arms, but not before sakura gives them standard-issued gloves to hide their prints seeing as it was an infiltration mission after all.

and something about that didn’t sit right with him.

because if killing a man and disposing of his body and leaving no trace of involvement and collecting blood money for it counted as a job well done, then he might as well quit on the spot.

and if this was what the world has come to, maybe he needed to make a better one.

* * *

obito couldn’t be naruto, because naruto believed in life without war and obito lived a life none existed without the other.

* * *

when they lose, they don’t just lose a mother or father or bestfriend or teacher. they lose _everything._

* * *

only obito takes some pieces with him and bends them to submission until he can no longer manipulate the world to his favor anymore. because for all the might he has achieved since regrown cells and new eyes, he has none the people to show for it. 

not parents taken from him prematurely, not a grandmother who spent her last moments without him by her side, but most certainly - never for a girl with brown hair and even browner eyes he first said hello to in the sandbox and was never able to say goodbye to.

still he forces the pieces to work together and demands the world he was robbed off and screams it to the last living person left to hear it. 

only this time, it is the other one on the receiving end of his ramblings that is hesitant and stares at him like he couldn’t understand how the happiest person he knew could know of suffering so intimately. 

and perhaps it is this, that kakashi still looked at him for all he could be, that nearly drives him over the edge.

* * *

unlike obito, naruto refuses to get by with only leftovers and instead works his way towards the world he knows is still there. all that he demands from it is this - healing.

he doesn’t take on the role of master puppeteer or forces unwilling subjects to do his bidding so much as he acts the roles with them. until he has gunned their walls down enough to reach out and cut the strings that bound them. then he breathes life into the wronged subjects and talks of a world that could be, one that is his just as much as it is theirs.

one where people could be people without the fear of night crimes or missions turned rogue, because the world he believed in accepted that some people did what they did to survive and some evil were evil because good has failed them.

one where he can finally bring someone home after a three year long detour and make him see reason that home wasn’t so much a place that tied them somewhere, but something they could free themselves from at their own will. because a place to call home was never meant in the literal sense, especially for them.

but it is not until he has told all of this to the last of his sensei’s former team and makes him remember all he once stood for and how alike and different they are – that they begin to heal.

* * *

naruto isn’t obito, but the last words he says to him are the ones he lives for.


End file.
